Conversing Hatred
by Taste of Cinnamon
Summary: I knew you, she said, I saw who you were. I see who you are now. And it’s pathetic...That was the moment his world started falling apart...or piecing back together. Draco converses with hatred.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:**

**So there I was sitting at my computer with a warm cup of Starbucks, ready to work on the next chapter of So Past Traditional (I dare you to read that too). I pulled it up on MS Word, and quite something quite nasty started nibbling at me and wouldn't quit until I gave in. That something nasty would be—you guessed it—the idea for this story.**

**Anyhoo, I've never done anything _Draco_ at all, so I figured this would be fun. He's an interesting character.**

**It's mostly just dialogue—I tried to keep actions to a bare minimum here—so you'll have to fill in the gaps yourself (I know you can do it). I put dates for a reason, by the way. They'll give you a little insight into emotions and feelings, etc, seeing as I wanted to not just state that outright. But enough babbling—though it is quite fun—and on with the fic.**

**---**

**Conversing Hatred**

_(If you know me at all you'll know titles aren't my strong suit)_

_By TasteOfCinnamon_****

_**Part One**_

_October 10_

It started off so innocently. He was sitting in the table for one under the stairs of the Boar's head, downing his third glass of ale, having developed a taste for it a few weeks ago. Around him witches with fingernails that were too red and too long chattered about things he's rather not think about, and shady wizards, goblins, and dwarfs made even shadier transactions beneath the secretive confines of their cloaks. But he wasn't there to watch them, or listen to them, or have anything to do with them.

He was there to drink his third glass of ale that night and let himself get more and more drunk as he stared at the carved letters at the table in front of him:

_Lucida Jenkins_

_1765_

Dimly he wondered who Lucida Jenkins was, or why her name was carved in that table, and how many other pitiful, worthless fools had also sat here in the same seat and drank the bartender's same murky ale and stared at the same name carved into the wood.

"That young man over there in the corner?"

"Yes, that's him. Thank you."

He looked up to see the bartender pointing him out to a woman—almost a girl, really—that looked too much like…

_Oh Crap_.

He pulled his hood lower over his eyes and reached into his pocket for a coin to throw on the table, suddenly desperate to leave the godforsaken place, but he wasn't fast enough.

"Draco?"

He found it all too easy to pull his lips into the familiar sneer he had worn for so long.

"Granger," he sneered, "What the Hell do you want?"

The young woman who had been talking to the bartender tucked a strand of hair behind her ear nervously.

"People have said that you're frequenting this tavern. You're going by…Jay now?"

He stared up at her coldly.

"I'm glad that—that I found you."

"So what do you want then, eh Granger? Eh, Mudblood? So you read the paper and come to gloat, have you? Come to point and laugh at poor Draco because now he's the one what's got nothing, is that it?"

"Draco—"

He felt a bolt of anger run through him and he stood up, clenching his wand so hard that he was sure it would snap. "You've won," he hissed at her, "Yeah, I'm not too high and mighty to admit that, but you know what? You're still a filthy little Mudblood. You're still nothing."

How she kept her temper in check he'll never know. "Draco—"

"DON'T SAY MY NAME!" he bellowed at her.

"—I only want to talk."

He reached into his pocket and fished out three knuts, which he threw on the table as payment for the ale. "Yeah? And what makes you think I'd want to talk to you?"

Half the tavern was staring at the two of them by now, but he didn't care. He wouldn't be coming back, in either case.

"Wait," Hermione called, "Draco, please!"

But he was already gone. Apparated. No longer there.

---

_October 12_

He was on his way home—if you could call his little rented room at the inn a home—when he ran into her again. She looked excited to see him, and he instinctively shrank away. He tried to push past her, but she grabbed his arm.

"The Hell's wrong with you, Granger?"

"They told me lived in one of these rooms," she said cheerfully.

"And when I get my hands on this 'they', I'll force feed them poison," he muttered under his breath. Louder, he said: "You need to get your filthy nose out of my life, Granger."

"I just thought—"

"That I'm an arrogant bastard who should just roll up and die. Yeah? Well I think that about you too, and your prat friends."

"No, of course not," she replied a bit irritably.

Draco sighed, and his temper boiled down considerably. When he spoke next, his voice was calm and weary, tinged with exhasperation.

"Look," he said, "I don't want to fight anymore. With you, or with Potter, or the Weasels. Not like at Hogwarts. I'm tired. I don't want to do it any longer. You want to laugh at me? Fine. Bring everyone here and let them have a good laugh, but after that," he wrenched his arm from her grasp, "you need to leave me the Hell alone."

---

_October 13_

"Jay."

It took him a moment to recognize his name, and he did, he looked up to see her. Again. Why the Hell wouldn't she leave him alone?

He'd been sitting on a bench in London station, staring listlessly at the departures board and wondering if it would be worth it to buy a train ticket just because he had nothing else to do.

"How the Hell do you keep finding me?"

She flushed. "I actually hadn't. I was seeing a friend off and I saw you sitting here."

She looked earnestly at him.

"And why couldn't you have just let me sit here?"

To his utter disgust, she took the seat on the bench next to him. He edged away. "You just disapparated last time, Draco—"

"Jay."

"Jay. I wanted to talk to you."

"No."

"Why?"

Draco stared at her as if she were mad. "Are you addled, Granger? I don't associate with people like you, much less _talk _to them."

She gave him a wise look. "Oh but I think you will," she said with that same know-it-all tone she had used every time she answered a question in class.

He tried not to look too repulsed. "What makes you think I will?"

"Because you've got no one else to talk to."

Draco felt a _whoosh_ somewhere deep inside him and knew that she had struck a chord that he didn't even know existed. But she was right. He hated how right she always was. Fuming, more at his own weakness than at her, he tried to regain the upper hand.

He tilted his chin up and tried to look unaffected. "I'd rather talk to no one than to you, Mudblood."

The next moment she was staring directly into his eyes and somehow she had managed to scoot closer to him. Her perfume was too sharp and made his nose itch, and he was frightened of somehow drowning in her big busy tangles.

"You're lonely." Hermione said matter of factly, as if she was merely commenting on a Charms essay.

"I'm—"

"You're lonely. You've lost everything and you don't know what to do, or where to go."

"You just be q—"

"All your friends are dead, or gone. Everyone you've had half a relationship with—"

"Crabbe and Goyle—"

"Are being tracked down by the Aurors as we speak. Your mother hasn't been seen for months—You're right, I read the paper—and your father—"

"Don't you _dare_ say anything about my father," he snarled, leaping up from the bench.

"Your father is in the hospital—"

"Granger—"

"—drifting in and out of consciousness—"

"I said—"

"_No one_ is allowed to see him, or speak to him, or visit—"

"I _SAID_, SHUT UP ABOUT MY FATHER!"

Around them, the station had fallen silent save for the whistling of trains and clicking of ticket machines.

After a long silence Hermione gave him a smile that looked terribly like pity.

"I'm the only one you can talk to, _Draco_. The only one."

His chest was heaving now in anger, but some part of him buried deep inside was reaching out to comfort, any comfort, from a Mudblood or no.

"Why?" he said quietly.

She smiled. "Because I knew you. I saw who you were, and I see who you are now, and it's pathetic."

And once again, she was right. He was. And suddenly, he felt weary, so incredibly tired and so incredibly _done_ with the world that he didn't want to hate anymore.

He was silent for a long, drawn out moment, and when he spoke finally, he could feel the world collapsing around him.

"Fine," he sighed, "Fine."

---

**I'm not used to writing Draco, and I'm trying very hard to make him believable. How'd I do?**

**For those of you wondering if this is a Draco Hermione ship, I wont answer that just yet (seeing as I'm still working out a little something). I don't actually support that pairing, but I enjoy writing stuff I don't support. **

**Psst…if I get some reviews, I may just be happy enough to write faster xD**

**And check out Tell Me Again the Meaning of a Merry Christmas (long title, I know). My excuse for this shameless advertising—I'm writing the two fics at the same time.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:  
I haven't really been getting reviews for this fic. **

**But that's okay.**

**It's one of those fics you write for yourself, not for others. (:**

---

**Conversing Hatred**

_(By TasteOfCinnamon)_

_**Part 2**_

_October 14_

He stared at his hands as she made her way back to the table with two mugs of butterbeer and he took his without meeting her eyes. Through his downcast lashes he saw her sit down across from him, readjust her scarf, and take a sip from her mug.

Silence for a few long moments, as he waited for her to talk.

But she didn't, and he ground his teeth in frustration as he glared at her. "Well?" he demanded angrily.

"Well…what?"

"You wanted to talk."

"Yes."

"So either you talk, or I'm leaving."

She sighed. "Draco—"

"_Jay."_

Hermione frowned at him. "Why Jay? Why not Draco?"

He said nothing.

"You're not on the run from the Ministry. No one's looking for you. Why the false name?"

Because he didn't want to be Draco anymore. Because he had wanted, he had believed, stiupidly, that he could start over, and that it could be achieved simply with another name.

"You wouldn't understand," he spat.

"So help me understand."

Again, silence on his part.

Hermione sighed and shook her head. "Fine," she said, "we'll leave that alone for now."

He stared at his butterbeer and focused on his hatred of her.

"You didn't become a Death Eater."

Draco lifted his head and stared her directly in the eyes as if daring her to taunt him.

"Why not, Draco?"

"Because I'm a worthless coward," he muttered, "is that what you want me to say? Are you happy now that I've admitted it?" he slammed his tankard down so hard the butterbeer sloshed over the sides and onto the table. He glared at the mess angrily. "Because I was too damned afraid."

Hermione pulled out her wand and cleaned up the spillage with a neat little tap. She shook her head from side to side. "That's not it, is it, Draco? That's not the reason."

"Stop calling me that," he retorted as he felt his temper escalate, "Damn you Granger, how is it that you think you know me so much better than I do myself?"

"You're _not_ a coward, Draco. I believe you didn't become one of them because…you were on our side, weren't you?"

"I would never fight for that fool, Dumbledore."

"That fool, Dumbledore, is why we're all still alive today," she said in that maddenly calm voice, "You didn't truly believe Voldemort was right, did you? You hated Muggle borns, and you hated Harry, but you never really were…one of them. Were you, Draco?"

Oh how he hated, _hated_ that she was always right. How he hated that she could read him like a book after he fought so hard to hide everything.

But somehow it didn't feel so bad to have someone understand him.

"I would never fight for Dumbledore," he repeated bitterly.

"But you wouldn't fight against him, either," she urged.

He watched his butterbeer bubble and foam.

"_Wouldn't you_, Draco?"

Draco kept his eyes firmly fixed on his mug in front of him. "Goddammit," he ground out, "You think you're so high and mighty now that you've figured me out, don't you? You think you know everything about me. But you don't, Granger, you don't. I can't just _not_ want to fight."

"And why not?"

"My father—"

"Have you ever _talked _your father?"

He felt something well up in his throat, and he swallowed as hard as he could, horrified. "They wont let me," he choked, "I went to St. Mungos, asked the damned lady at the counter for Lucius Malfoy, and she told me with that godforsaken smile of hers that he wasn't allowed to have visitors. My father, Granger. I'm not allowed to see my _father_." Draco blinked furiously to stop the tears that were beginning to well up in his eyes to fall. He'd rather die than let her see him cry; he had half a heart to walk out right then.

"_Before_ the war." Hermione corrected gently.

He looked at her as if she were crazy. "You're supposed to be smart, Granger. You don't just walk up to Lucius Malfoy and tell him 'hey Dad, I'm not going to be a Death Eater. Sorry, but I don't believe in Voldemort.' You wouldn't even try."

"But now you blame yourself for _not_ joining him, because now he's hurt and you think you could have protected him."

"Stop it, damn you," he muttered.

"Draco…"

"It's _not_ Draco."

Her mouth opened and she leaned forward slightly as if she were about to say something else, and then she stopped herself, smiled slightly, and shook her head. "I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to go like this. I wasn't supposed to bring any of this up; I just wanted to talk—not about this. Not about things that had already happened."

He shook his head. "I have to go." he said.

"Why?"

Draco ignored her question. "What's your damn fascination with me, woman? I don't like you, you don't like me. We weren't supposed to ever even see each other after Hogwarts."

"I looked in the paper, Draco—"

"_Jay_."

"_Draco_,"—she ignored his hostile glare—"and I read about your Mum, how she disappeared, and I know—everyone knows—about your father, and I just thought that you might…you might need a friend."

"Put away your fairy tales Granger," he scoffed, "grow up."

"I'm a little idealistic, I know," she insisted, "but sometimes that's what helps."

"I have to go," he said again.

She nodded, swirling the last of her butterbeer around in her mug. "I'll be here next week."

"I don't care."

Hermione shrugged and picked up her bags. "Just thought you'd like to know."

---

**Hmm. Lets see where this goes, shall we? (;**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:**

**This is a considerably longer chapter; I really don't want this to turn into a multichapter fic. It's only just too long for a one-shot.**

**Anyways, thanks to Dead-Luthien (did I spell that right?) For reviewing and such. **

**Bwah and boom to you.**

---

_**Part three**_

_October 21_

"There once was a man who failed so miserably at life that he just didn't want to do it anymore. He didn't want to be who he was or live like he used to, because it was all too much of a hassle and he just wanted everything to go away."

"I didn't come here to listen to your clichés, Granger."

"So he cut himself off from everything—his friends, his family, everyone that had been a part of his life—and he spent the next four years fighting to become someone else."

"Good for him then."

"I ask you, Draco, what happened to that young man in the end?"

He looked at her in bewilderment. "Bloody Hell Granger, how am I supposed to know?"

They were strolling in the Hogsmede plaza, their scarves wrapped tightly about their necks and their hats pulled down over their ears…or rather, Hermione was strolling, and Draco was doing his best to make the worst out of the situation.

She put on the same knowledgeable look she used so often. "Look," she said firmly, "I offered to be your friend and since you showed up today, I'm going to _assume_ you're taking me up on the offer. Now I know you hate me, and don't respect me _at all_, and I'm good with that for now, but if this is going to work in the _least_, you need to understand that my name is Hermione."

He stared at her.

"_Hermione._ Not Mudblood, not Granger."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Fine. Hell of a lot of difference that makes."

"And your name," she continued, "is Draco. And that's what I'm going to call you."

"Fine."

Hermione smiled. "Good. So. The young man ended up losing himself, and sinking so far into his loss that he used to get up in the morning, look at himself in the mirror, and not know if it was a human he was seeing or something demonic—like someone who's had his soul sucked out by a dementor."

Draco couldn't help himself—he burst out into laughter, and it came out so hacking, so pathetic sounding even to himself that he ceased immediately.

"Laugh if you want, Draco," she said, amused, "but you're going to finish that young man's story for me. One day."

"So you're my therapist now," he muttered half to cover up his maniacal outburst a moment earlier. "That's just wonderful."

"Sorry?"

"I'm still trying to figure out what you want from me."

She frowned at him and picked at a stray strand from her scarf. "Sorry?" she repeated.

"You say you don't want to spat, you don't want to laugh at me, you're not here to just stare at me. I'm missing something—what?"

"I want you to stop making a mess of your life," she said, shaking her head, "and possibly, eventually, to be your—"

"Ha!" he scoffed, stopping his steps so that she had to turn back to look at him. "What, are you addled, Granger? You want me to be your friend. Me. A Malfoy. You. A mudblood."

Hermione fixed him with a firm, direct stare, but remained silent.

"Don't think that you can get to me with kind words and butterbeer, Hermione," he said softly, "Don't think that just because you claim to know me I'll just open up to you and become like that idiot Potter and his idiot friends. I'm not going to fall on my knees and thank you for saving me, and I'm not going to ever, _ever_ fall into whatever trap you've set."

An owl floated by and Hermione followed it's passing with her eyes. A bell jingled somewhere and she turned her head toward the direction of the sound. A twig snapped under someone's feet and she stared at the two forlorn pieces laying in the street.

Finally she looked up at him.

"I have to go," she said calmly, completely ignoring his outburst. "I'll see you next week."

As she walked away, leaving him to stand in the middle of the square; blankly and quite alone, he wondered dimly if it were all worth it.

---

_October 28_

Why Draco continued to show up at the Three Broomsticks week after week to see her he would never know, but he was there again. And as she approached, he felt that familiar feeling of hatred toward her—albeit dulled—and he began to wonder if he was sane after all.

"Draco," she called as he approached, her voice quite chipper. She was leaning against the bar, clutching two _bottles _of butterbeer this time. "I thought we'd go for a walk again."

He shrugged and took his bottle. "Fine with me."

"I thought we'd go back to Hogwarts. It's Saturday, so we won't be bothering anyone. I'm sure the headmaster wouldn't mind."

At the mention of Hogwarts, he closed up immediately and drew into himself.

"Draco?"

"No," he said firmly.

Hermione shrugged. "I don't suppose you'd want to go to the Burrow—sorry, I meant to Ron's house—either?"

He gave her a look of utter bewilderment and contempt and his expression said so plainly "Are you quite insane?" that she laughed.

"Well, where do you want to go?"

Draco lifted one shoulder. "Here's fine with me."

"But not with _me_. There must be someplace you'd want to see."

"Nope."

"What about Diagon Alley?"

"Nowhere magical."

Hermione blew a breath of air out of the side of her mouth. "We could just buy tickets for the next train departure, and go wherever's on the ticket."

He shrugged.

And so they did.

---

_November 4_

"I'm going to get you a phone."

Draco glanced up from the meaningless swirls and shapes he was drawing in the dirt with a stick. "A phone?"

"Well, not a _phone _in the Muggle sense of the word, but some way for me to contact you and you to contact me."

"I won't need to."

Hermione grabbed a stick from the ground as well and drew a large circle in the dirt. "You might."

"I don't want a phone."

"What if I wanted to contact you?"

"Why?"

"To talk. Or to ask you what you ate for breakfast that morning. Or ask what you were doing that weekend." She reached for her wand in her coat pocket and said a few choice words. The next moment two slim black cartridges had appeared in her hand.

"You could walk down the street talking to me with this and no one would suspect magic at all. And they only ever communicate with each other."

Draco stared at the small cases in her hand.

"You just say my name—Hermione, not Granger—into it and we'll be able to talk to each other."

He took the one she offered to him and looked at it suspiciously. Lord but he was getting too tangled up in this.

"You hold it up to your ear like this"—she demonstrated—"to talk. You don't have to, but it makes it seem more like a _phone_. I figured out how to make them myself."

The tip of Draco's branch traced Hermione's circle deeper into the dirt over and over until he was pushing so hard that it snapped. He looked at the two broken pieces in distaste.

Beside him, Hermione put her chin into her hands and gave a low "Hmm,"

"What?" he said defensively.

"I was just thinking," she mused.

Draco grunted.

"If I had even tried to say your _name_ back at Hogwarts," she said after a while "you would have jinxed me. Even a few weeks ago you were screaming at me to get the Hell away from you."

He stomped her circle and his shapes into the ground with his sneakers until the drawings had disappeared.

"It makes me wonder if it's because you've changed, or if it's because this was the real you after all."

Draco looked up at her. She was staring back at him with a knowing, almost amused expression on her face. For a moment he came dangerously close to losing his temper again, but instead of exploding, he felt his anger whittle down, until it had all but faded. He half laughed. She was right, again. Just the fact that he _hadn't_ burst out in rage at what she'd said proved he wasn't the spoiled, arrogant Slytherin he had once been.

And it scared him. Terribly.

---

_November 4: Night_

Draco sat with his feet dangling off the musty smelling bed in his inn room, staring at the little black device Hermione had given him earlier that day. He turned it over and over in his hands, trying to detect anything wrong with it. He half hoped there was; that way he could throw it on the ground and scream at her again, because that was what made him secure.

Screaming at her.

Not talking with her, not having lunches and taking walks with her. Gods, what had he become?

Draco hesitated before holding the case at eye level and saying, loudly and clearly, "Hermione."

Nothing happened, and he began to feel certain it _was_ a trick after all, and that she never truly wanted to help him. He knew, he just _knew_, that she would apparate into the room at any moment and laugh at him for falling into her trap.

And then—

"Draco?"

Her voice sounded it came from right beside him, and not from the "phone" at all. Draco jumped and almost dropped it altogether.

"Draco? Hello?"

He clutched the communicator to his ear, not sure what else to do.

"Er, Hello…Hermione," he said, feeling like an idiot.

"Oh," she said. "Did you need something?"

"No." he said, poking at a lump on the covers beside him. "I just…wanted to see if it works."

"Oh," she said again.

"Okay then. I'll see you," and he threw the phone onto his bedside table, where it beeped once and was silent.

---


End file.
